Dear friends,
Karen and I enjoy going to Church when we are away on holiday, mainly because we seldom have the opportunity to sit together in worship, and I believe that it is good for me to be able to receive and be fed instead of always being the one who is attempting to preach. When we were on holiday in Yorkshire recently, we went to the Church we used to attend before we moved to Norfolk in 2005. The service was particularly special because we picked Karen’s elderly auntie up on the way to Church and Karen sat next to her, then my brother arrived and sat next to me, which was a lovely experience.
The service was being led by a local preacher, who for me was classed as “young” I guess that he was possibly in his early forties and he brought his young son, maybe ten or eleven years old? And they led the service between them. I thought it particularly special when the young lad prayed for the Sunday School as they left the main body of the worship. The style of worship was gentle and lovely, and dad and lad worked well together, with obviously carefully planned comical exchanges during the sermon. The little lad introduced the hymns, and they shared the prayers together. As somebody who seldom gets the opportunity to hear other preachers these days, I truly valued that morning.
The problem with going back to your home Church is that the preacher and his son had left, before I got a change to speak with them, had I been able to have a chat, I might just have spoken the usual platitudes and thanked him for a lovely service. As it was, I reflected during the remainder of my holiday and managed to get the preachers e-mail address from my brother, so when I returned to Ipswich, I sat at my computer and penned and email telling him how much I appreciated the service and the power and challenge of his message. Within minutes I received a reply and sadly, he was overwhelmed, he told me that nobody had ever thanked him for a service and the message was just what he needed to hear, because some people had given negative feedback about him using his son in worship in this way.
This whole experience got me thinking, we find it so much easier to hammer of a message of complaint, make sure they know our feelings when we don’t think they were good enough. It is so much easier to say nothing when we get what we expect. Maybe because I am a preacher, I am more aware than some, just how much work goes into preaching and maybe I have felt that experience of preaching several times on a Sunday and ended up drained. I know what an effort it takes and maybe I am the right one to be showing my appreciation.
Our worship today focusses on the servant ministry and as I read the gospel story, I understand that we do not do what we do for reward, compliment, pride, or recognition, but in our love for God.
Some Churches have dropped the word “steward” from job titles and replaced it with coordinator, manager,
enabler, secretary, or some other secular title. Deep down, I feel that there is a different emphasis on the word
steward, a steward is somebody who looks after something for a more superior body. The Church is Christ’s, the world is God’s, I hate it when I hear people say “my Church” or treat the world as though it is ours to consume.
Becoming a grandad changed my view of things, my nine-year-old grandson will be around long after I am gone, and I owe it to him to leave behind a Church and world that is fit for purpose. There are times when I feel surrounded by people who believe that the world owes them a living and they are superior to the rest of humankind. I believe that humility and servitude are important values in the world today. To that end, I know that there are people who have found the weekly letter and service a life line and because of them, I am happy to spend a little of my time every week churning letters out. If you find that you aren’t reading them and
all they are doing is filling up you recycle bin, please let me know and we’ll take you off the list, we won’t be
offended.
With best wishes.
Derek